Last week, University of the Pacific’s McGeorge School of Law named Michael T. Colatrella Jr. as its new dean effective July 1.
Many of us know Michael, who hosted the AALS WIP conference last fall.
He is the inaugural Tracy A. Eglet Chair in Alternative Dispute Resolution. He joined McGeorge in 2009 as an assistant professor of law and was named associate dean for academic affairs in 2015, serving in the role for four years. In 2019 he was appointed interim dean, shepherding the law school through the first months of the tumultuous COVID-19 pandemic.
He is an expert in
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Latest from Indisputably
What can Los Angeles Learn from Seventeenth Century London?
You all know about the LA fires that have wreaked unprecedented destruction and devastation in the region. Everyone in LA has been affected somehow. Many have lost their homes, schools, and communities. Those of us who don’t fall into this category know and love people who do. Others of us are trapped in a living nightmare, worried that the worsening weather conditions will cause the fires to engulf their neighborhoods as well.
You may also know that London experienced a similar natural disaster. In 1666, the Great Fire of London ravaged the city, leaving it in ruins. Rebuilding seemed impossible
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Promoting Law Students’ Agency
A recent article in the New York Times described benefits of instructional methods that encourage high school students to take more control over their learning.
Young adults say they feel woefully unprepared for life in the work force, and employers say they’re right.
In a survey by Gallup and the Walton Family Foundation of more than 4,000 members of Gen Z, 49 percent of respondents said they did not feel prepared for the future. Employers complain that young hires lack initiative, communication skills, problem-solving abilities and resilience.
There’s a reason the system isn’t serving people well, and it goes beyond
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Register for Virtual Book Launch: The Federal Arbitration Act: Successes, Failures, and a Roadmap for Reform
Please join me (Jill Gross – Haub Law/Pace) and Rick Bales (Ohio Northern) for the online book launch of THE FEDERAL ARBITRATION ACT: SUCCESSES, FAILURES, AND A ROADMAP FOR REFORM, on Wednesday, January 15, 2025 at 1:00 p.m.
In honor of the 100th anniversary of the Federal Arbitration Act, this volume brings together a diverse group of leading scholars and practitioners to celebrate its successes and propose specific reforms. Co-edited by Haub Law Professor and Vice Dean for Academic Affairs Jill I. Gross and Ohio Northern University Professor of Law Richard A. Bales, the book gives insight into how the
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ADR Scholarship Projects – January 2025
Happy New Year everyone! Here is the latest installment of scholarship projects by ADR Profs and practitioners all around the country. Thanks again to Peter Reilly (Texas A&M) for compiling and circulating this impressive list.
Hal Abramson (Touro Law)
Time-Pressured Negotiations 30.2 Harv. Negot. L. Rev. (forthcoming 2025)
This article considers how to negotiate when you do not have the time to use your best negotiation practices. No other article has considered what to do when in a time-pressured negotiation other than to advise you not to be trapped by a deadline. When you have no choice but to rush, this
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UC Law SF’s Spring 2025 ADR Speaker Series is here!
On behalf of the from The Center for Negotiation and Dispute Resolution (CNDR) at UC Law San Francisco (formerly UC Hastings), I am pleased to announce our annual ADR Speaker Series for the Spring. Our fabulous presenters include:
Prof. Shahla Ali, Hong Kong University, on “The Dynamics of Infrastructure Dispute Mitigation” (Jan. 22)
Prof. Carrie Menkel-Meadow, UC Irvine School of Law, on “Dealing with International Dispute Resolution: Multiple Parties and Wicked Problems” (Jan. 29)
Prof. Jesse Bregant, University of Houston Law Center, on “Settlementality” (Feb. 12)
Prof. Jean Sternlight, William S. Boyd School of Law, UNLV, on “The Psychology of
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Updates to Collections of Real Practice Systems Project Publications
This year, I wrote a lot of blog posts and short SSRN articles about the Real Practice Systems (RPS) Project, particularly about attorneys’ real practice systems and legal education. So I updated collections of these materials to make it easier to find things of interest.
This blog post provides a concise summary of RPS theory and links to key publications about mediators’ and attorneys’ systems as well as how to incorporate these insights in legal education.
For a more complete collection, check out the annotated bibliography.
I recently posted a short article, How Can You Turn Adversarial Attorneys into
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Harmonizing with Michael
My friend and colleague, Michael Moffitt, mused about my musings about law review reprints.
Not one to let a good musing go to waste, I hereby muse on Michael’s musing. Michael savors others’ reprints. I savor Michael’s prose.
In my prior musing, I identified some problems with printed reprints of law review articles but I said I missed getting reprints with handwritten notes. I should add the benefit of holding the tangible manifestation of one’s hard work (including oodles of footnotes in Bluebook format).
Michael concurred with my complaints, added some more, and noted some benefits of reprints that I
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A Concurring Dissent, or a Dissenting Concurrence, on Law Review Reprints
My friend and colleague John Lande just posted a musing about law review reprints. John notes that he misses law review reprints only because he now receives no personalized notes from reprints’ authors.
John did not need to rehearse the reasons for reprints’ relatively recent demise. He didn’t need to. These reasons are well understood and almost entirely valid—reprints are astonishingly expensive, they’re wasteful, they are unsearchable, their mailing is bad for the environment, they are un-cut-and-past-able, they take up precious physical space, and they’re unnecessary in a digital age.
I write separately, as though I were deciding whether
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Ode to Reprints
As I was cleaning out my bookshelves to give some books to my school’s library, I encountered stacks of reprints of law review articles. In the olden days, sending reprints was a regular thing. We would order extra reprints of our articles and then send them postally (!) to colleagues, often with a short personal note.
When I was going through my bookshelves, it was very sweet to see such reprints from friends and colleagues.
I confess that I mostly don’t miss the reprints. I prefer to read things on a computer screen and I’m glad to avoid the ecological
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Are You Preparing a Dispute Resolution Course Next Semester?
If so, take a look at this Model Mediation Course Syllabus With Teaching Notes – even if you are teaching a dispute resolution course other than mediation.
The model syllabus includes a menu of topics, readings, and simulations that can be incorporated in many DR courses. It includes links to short readings for students that are available for free on the internet and can easily be included in any course.
In particular, it includes a unit about parties that is generally relevant in many courses. Legal education generally treats parties as ghosts without interests other than winning in court and
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In Memoriam: Tom Schaub
I learned yesterday of the passing of Tom Schaub. In a blog focused primarily on law professors and dispute resolution, it may seem expansive for me to call attention to Tom (who was neither a lawyer, nor particularly interested in the sometimes-narrow constraints of “disputes” as they are commonly conceived.) Tom worked in the field, on several continents, often in contexts in which the law was, at best, only one of the relevant factors. He was helpfully impatient, aggravatingly optimistic, and resolutely public-minded without ever failing to understand the real world incentives and constraints involved. On a personal level, he
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If You Will Teach Mediation (or Other DR Course) Next Year, Read This
At this year’s AALS ADR Section WIP Conference, I presented data showing that more than 90% of law school mediation courses and more than 90% of the coverage in popular mediation texts focus on the mediator’s role. I asked people what they think the emphasis generally should be in generic mediation courses, and here are the responses.
- Mostly neutral, representation secondary – 11 (55%)
- Mostly representation, neutral secondary – 4 (20%)
- Equal neutral and representation – 5 (25%)
As you can see, slightly more than half of the people responding favor continuing the emphasis on the neutral role (though not
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New Edition of Michael Lang’s Book on Reflective Practice
Pioneering family mediator Michael Lang just released the second edition of his book, The Guide to Reflective Practice in Conflict Resolution. He provided an account of his development as a mediator as one of the Ten Real Mediation Systems. He is the co-director of the Reflective Practice Institute International.
Michael’s book builds on Donald Schön’s classic work, The Reflective Practitioner. Michael writes that reflective practice is more than a set of methods and processes. It also is a “distinct mindset of being curious about and attentive to unexpected events and being open to new explanations and interpretations.”
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Is 90% Too Much?
10%.
That percentage – or less – is the rough proportion of the mediation curriculum devoted to mediation representation in US law schools, including about:
- 6% of mediation clinic courses
- 9% of mediation simulation courses
- 3-9% of the coverage in some mediation textbooks
- 7% of the coverage in many mediation courses
Is it too much to devote 90% of our mediation instruction to the role of mediators – especially considering that new graduates represent clients in mediation much more frequently than they mediate?
I think so. I explain why in Law Schools Should Substantially Increase Instruction in Mediation Representation.
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Theory and Practice of Mediation Representation
As we know, American attorneys regularly represent clients in mediation. There’s a ton of theory about mediation generally but much less about mediation representation.
I just posted an article, Theory and Practice of Mediation Representation, which presents a theoretical analysis based on Real Practice System Theory. The following graphic provides an overview, which the article elaborates.
Most writing and instruction about mediation focuses on mediators’ actions during mediation sessions, depicted in the green cell in the table. In practice, the mediation process often involves all the cells in the table.
Attorneys’ case evaluation and client counseling, shaded in blue,
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